not separately
by Yui Miyamoto
Summary: (AU) Everything has been dealt with, but can the Elric brothers ever really find "peace"? (Note: Edward and Alphonse pairing)
1. Prologue

**Fandom: Full Metal Alchemist  
Title: not separately.  
Pairing: Edward + Alphonse  
Rating: PG  
Description: (AU) Everything has been dealt with, but can the Elric brothers ever really find ****"****peace****"****? (Note: Edward and Alphonse pairing)**

**Disclaimer: Full Metal Alchemist doesn****'****t belong to Yui.**

**not separately.  
By miyamoto yui**

**Prologue - the children  
**

There is something delightful, yet harmful in the way children are so untouched by the ways of the world.

At first, they know nothing of the world and all its prejudice until you teach them what is "appropriate" and what is "not". Their vision is not colored by the way adults see, but this blindness is sometimes a form of ignorance that can never be sought after again, no matter how much you'd like to return to a time that seemed so much easier than the demands the world puts on you each and every day.  
And when we learn something is not as it seems, it empowers someone to change the system set before them or to accept it as the way it is. Sometimes, it is ignored. But more often than not, it is a disappointment that cannot transcend time or heal the wound that you have embedded within yourself never to forget.

Just as innocently as you have come into the world with nothing but your heart, you too will never forget the first time you felt happiness or pain. And that wound remains and is untouched into eternity.

It's something you feel but cannot ever resolve, no matter how much you try.

People always tell you it gets better with time. I just smile tiredly with all the emotion I can feel at a particular moment, if at all.

Adults are liars.

It _doesn__'__t _get better with time.  
You just learn how to distract yourself better as time goes on…

**Tsuzuku****… / To be continued…**


	2. Part 1

**Fandom: Full Metal Alchemist  
Title: not separately.  
Pairing: Edward + Alphonse  
Rating: PG  
Description: (AU) Everything has been dealt with, but can the Elric brothers ever really find ****"****peace****"****? (Note: Edward and Alphonse pairing)  
**  
**Disclaimer: FMA isn****'****t mine. ****"****You are my sunshine****"**** is a childhood song, not mine either.**

**not separately.  
By miyamoto yui**

**Part 1 - the clean laundry.  
**

"You are my sunshine  
My only sunshine,  
You make me happy  
When stars are gray…"

It was silly thing to sing while I was putting up the laundry onto the clothesline, but I couldn't think of another song. I wanted something that was mindless yet happy enough so that I wouldn't have to think of anything. You know how it is to think of one undying question and the countless seconds you devote to the topic never really lead to any concrete resolution.

Snap. Flap, flap.

I put another piece of clothing on the line as the sky above me shone a bright blue. It was so clear without the clouds that I almost wished it was a bit cooler.

But instead, some sparrows flew by and I stood there for a moment watching the sky. I wished I could look at the clouds today. I wanted to name what I saw to him, but there was no chance of that now. He would think we're too old for that now.

I take out the last piece of clothing and line it up neatly next to all the others. Then, I make sure that they are securely in place before I take up the basket to go into the house.

The house, as usual, is immaculate. This is how I spend my days, of course. I clean and I make meals.  
I wait for the time to pass by.

I enjoy life this way, as slow as it is. I have waited a long time for days like this.

People take this kind of thing for granted. I have to say that I did too, but having lost it, I know now the folly of this little wrongdoing.

There is no sound but the noise I make when I touch or open something. It resounds throughout the house like an echo that bounces off the walls over and over. Inside of myself, I don't know if it's safe to be quiet.  
All I know is that it is there.

Maybe I have not grown up at all. Have I always been this empty?

At that moment, I look up to see myself in the hallway mirror. I look so far away even though I know I am near. Who is that person staring back at me like a stranger with no name?

When you forsake God, your name is completely erased.

But then, I scare myself as I calmly ask aloud, "What is the point of forgiveness?"

**Tzuzuku****… / To be continued…**


	3. Part 2

**Fandom: Full Metal Alchemist  
Title: not separately.  
Pairing: Edward + Alphonse  
Rating: PG  
Description: (AU) Everything has been dealt with, but can the Elric brothers ever really find ****"****peace****"****? (Note: Edward and Alphonse pairing)**

**Disclaimer: FMA doesn****'****t belong to me.**

**not separately.  
By miyamoto yui**

**Part 2 - on the edge of the pier.  
**

There were times when we used to go out onto the pier and sit on the edge of it. We'd look at all the things around us and look at one another as if the world was always ours. It was as if we were untouched by everything that had passed.

And then we would realize that that wasn't fair. We would become a little quiet.

Then, he would tell me, "We deserve the right to live too."

I didn't know what he meant, for it could have meant many, many things. It could have meant through society. We didn't talk to anyone anymore. We ran away from the world and enclosed ourselves into our tiny, desert-like paradise.  
It could have been through religion. Counted as one of the chosen and yet to be also put into the same caliber as the devil, the world couldn't make up its mind. And in the end, words filled up all the gaps, whether they meant something or not. Whether they were the truth or not.

It's funny that people seek the "truth" and yet when they are unsatisfied with it, they either discard it, kill it, or leave it alone as if it they never discovered it.

It could have been through morality. But what is that? There's no such thing as boundaries when you really think about them. We just impose them on ourselves and on others.

And so, we'll open our mouths again to talk of many, many things once more.

We used to talk of many things when we watched the water of the pier flow by with no other people or things around us.

But now, we don't talk of the things that we're supposed to.

Except, who's to say that we're not? Not even ourselves, that I know.

**Tsuzuku... / To be continued…**


	4. Part 3

**Fandom: Full Metal Alchemist  
Title: not separately.  
Pairing: Edward + Alphonse  
Rating: PG  
Description: (AU) Everything has been dealt with, but can the Elric brothers ever really find ****"****peace****"****? (Note: Edward and Alphonse pairing)**

**Disclaimer: FMA isn****'****t Yui****'****s.**

**not separately.  
By miyamoto yui**

**Part 3 - kami.  
**

When it is evening, I stare at his bare back. He sits on the bed with crossed legs while I am at the ledge, about to fall off. He laughs because I tip the bed over towards me.  
"You're always like that," he says in between his sweet laughter. It is exhausted, but it sounds so smooth and sugary, like chocolate melting in your mouth.  
He then swifts his hand over his hair to let it flow and cover his back like a curtain closing at the end of the show, waiting for its next performance. It is very long now. He doesn't dare cut it.

I don't know why I won't let him. It's not like I can feel anything.

But I can hear it in his voice. I can feel it in the air. Even with guilt intertwined into all the particles that surround us, that is my form of emotion carried from me to him and him to me.

"I don't want to do this," I protested once, but he makes me comb his hair every single night after he takes a bath.

He closes his eyes and he says he feels relaxed. I continue to comb as carefully as my clumsy metal fingers can.

He never says a word of pain. Even when I get it all wrong, he just glances back at me and nods patiently with a wide smile showing his white teeth.

I don't know what I've done for such a response, but I am glad for it. He always seemed to praise me that way even though I wasn't as talented as him at anything except training.

I continue to comb his hair, which is the same color that mine was. It is healthy and it is thick. It is straight and it is beautiful.

I find myself stopping and he does not say anything.

And then he takes his hair over his shoulder and leans his back against the coldness of my body. I want to get up so that he won't catch a cold that way, but he touches my arm, urging me to stay with him.  
His eyes are closed as his back presses harder onto me and I creak just a little.

I stare down at him, the one who shouted, "This is the body of a sinner!"

My head hangs on my shoulders so heavily.

We are connected by invisible scars. He is not the only sinner. His body wasn't ever his own once I lost mine. He gave himself to me that day without knowing.

Maybe that terrible memory is secretly a miracle that I abhor myself for, splattered with all my selfishness…

**Tsuzuku****… / To be continued…**

kami - hair or god.


	5. Epilogue

**Fandom: Full Metal Alchemist  
Title: not separately.  
Pairing: Edward + Alphonse  
Rating: PG  
Description: (AU) Everything has been dealt with, but can the Elric brothers ever really find ****"****peace****"****? (Note: Edward and Alphonse pairing)**

**Disclaimer: FMA****…****you know what****'****s up here.**

**not separately.  
By miyamoto yui**

**Epilogue - the adults.  
**

My brother only half-sleeps.

He never uses the bed that we have in our little home. Instead, he has gotten into the habit of sleeping in my lap whenever I sit on the wooden floor and lean my back against the wall. I stare straight out towards the direction of the window, but he leans his head forward while closing his eyes.  
I embrace him. His bangs scatter and brush against my metal arms.

"Try to remember," he tells me because he knows what I am thinking with my silence pounding into his heart. But he does not push me.

It is I. I am pushing myself to remember the way he felt whenever I embraced him.

He falls asleep somehow. He is very still except for the occasional mumbling when he talks in his sleep.

But once in a while, he'll wake up with a shriek. And that's when I have to really hold him from falling apart. He reaches for the ceiling and looks for things in the darkness. He's too shocked or scared that his voice loses its volume and it is completely silent again.

However, his tears fall to onto me. I have small rust spots marking me with his inflictions.

As if in a moment of time, we are quiet statues. He is reaching out into the darkness above us. I want to see what he sees…

He never lets me experience what he's going through. He's so selfish that way. He completely forgets all that we've learned about sharing and giving and taking equally from nature and each other.

He always says he wants to save me. He says he loves me, but he hurts me by doing this to himself.

Then, those are the times when we sit quietly all day. I don't move at all and he holds onto me with a silence in which all the tension is squeezed into each atom of the air, waiting to explode. He doesn't want me to leave.

"They'll take you away," he mumbles to himself. "You have to stay here until I say you can go, Al.  
Please."

Whenever he pleads, I keep on remembering _that time _as if I were recalling a memory of holding my breath underwater when we swam as children…

"NOO~! GIVE AL BACK TO ME!" His piercing cry made everyone stop for one second in time.

The Colonel looked at me with a disappointed face. He finally lost all the things he believed in, my brother being most primary. Even though he looked intact, he later laughed to himself and lived in seclusion.  
No one knows if he's dead or alive. But for brother's sake, I know he's somewhere out there...

"GIVE AL BACK! I'LL GIVE YOU ANYTHING!" he shouts with a cracked voice as he finally pounds on the ground. Then, he goes on his hands and knees.

All self-respect was gone and I wanted to shout at his stupidity. But all I remembered was when he looked up into my face with tears in his eyes.

He waiting for a judgment.

With a pained smile, he ignored everyone as he firmly told me, "You are all I have left in the world."

And after that, I remember nothing. I have blocked it out of my mind and twice as much from my heart. He keeps me in ignorance even though it is not like him to be that way.

I know the heart and kindness and intelligence of the person that I love still resides in the body that I hold in my arms every night. But I know he is very changed too.

I cannot cry, though. I am unable to.

And so I wrap myself around him, as much as I can.

But I am a little angry.  
You are not fair, Ni-chan. You never let me share the burden with you.

You can't protect me forever and not from everything. Maybe, one day, they _will_ come to take me away, some way or another. Every day that you are silent like this, I know _I am_ the one killing you each time.  
But as for my sake, I keep on doing the best that I can for you.

Until we are judged,

Let's enjoy our delusional paradise.

Another day ends and I close my eyes.  
We drift off to sleep,

hoping we'll never wake up again,  
or most of all,  
not separately.

It is then, before I lose all control of consciousness, I can feel the warmth of his body…  
…but after all this time, it is of no consequence.

As long as his heart is still beating, that's all that matters to me now.

Desperately, I need that to be so.

**Owari. / The End.**

**Author****'****s note:** I don't know why, but I'm on a FMA kick. It'll probably turn into HnG soon since my fingers are itching to write about Akira, who has been unmolested-er, unwritten for, for a long time now.  
When I get into strange moods, I tend to write things that make no sense at all. And this is one of those  
days. Being true to the meaning of "yaoi", it has "no climax, no resolution, no meaning". These are a series of vignettes that are held together very loosely. Somehow, even though I didn't know exactly how to do it, I wanted to make them powerful.  
But I tried to make this at least 5 parts for Edward's insignia: 4 points of a cross with a serpent.  
**  
Friday, September 10, 2004**


End file.
